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Comment by throwthat1 | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the time someone blocked a road on Google maps by bringing a bunch of phones and staying still (or something along these lines).

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https://youtu.be/k5eL_al_m7Q

He put 99 smart phones in a wagon with all of them running Google maps in drive mode. Google interpreted this as a traffic jam, and made other cars avoid the area.

Oh that's totally priceless. I definitely have some use for this :)

Invisible-Roadblocks-as-a-Service courtesy of Google.

Discussed at the time:

Google Maps Hacks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22216821 - Feb 2020 (382 comments)

There's a unicorn in there somehow.

There's a unicorn in there somehow.

Absolutely.

Rich enclaves paying you to drive a bucket of cell phones around the neighborhood slowly in an electric golf cart.

Or simpler: The rich enclaves pay you to supply their existing private security cars/carts with buckets of charged phones to drive slowly around their existing routes.

I feel like there's a great movie plot point you could write where the bank robbers use this trick to clear traffic out of their way during the escape.

I wonder what percentage of cars use google maps to navigate at any one point though

During the solar eclipse of 2017, I drove to a small town in eastern Nebraska. The town had a 10k race that day. There were about 3 cars, including mine, on this stretch of road. Stop-and-going inbetween the runners. While my wife drove, I watched Google Maps. It accurately put a short red line on our part of the road. Amused me though that it only took 3 cars to accomplish that.

Hah! I have a 2017 eclipse story related to this, too!

A few days after the eclipse, we were driving through Custer State Park in South Dakota. There were relatively few cars on the road but Google Maps would inexplicably show these very short red traffic jams.

We quickly realized that we could anticipate upcoming bison sightings as people slowed down to take pictures of them walking (or sleeping) on the side of the road.

That's kinda awesome. I love the idea of bison jams. And using it as a predictor of bison sightings.

A Berlin artist used 99 phones on a bicycle to trick Google into showing a traffic jam.

That’s hilarious, so Google interpreted it as a high traffic area?

He filled a wagon with 99 phones and walked around so Google would think there was a traffic jam.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/a-man-walke...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/berlin-ar...

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